PANOPTES
(Panoptic
Astronomical
Networked
Observatories
for a
Public
Transiting
Exoplanets
Survey) is a citizen science project which aims to build low cost, robotic telescopes which can be used to detect transiting exoplanets.

Overview

Due to the simplicity and low cost (an individual PANOPTES unit is targeted to cost about $5000 USD), a PANOPTES "unit" can be reproduced quickly and easily by students or amateur scientists. In this way, many units can be deployed at many different sites
to provide continuous and redundant sky coverage. PANOPTES is designed from the ground up to be a citizen science project which will involve the public in all aspects of the science, from data acquisition to data reduction.

Software / Hardware

The philosophy behind the
PANOPTES hardware and software design
is to use as many commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts as possible as these are generally
inexpensive and easily acquired. In addition, the PANOPTES design is kept as simple as possible
as this makes the build process easier and means that the final product is more reliable.

Community

PANOPTES is also a platform. We encourage other groups to come up with projects which use PANOPTES data or PANOPTES hardware to address other scientific questions.